A Tale of Dirty Tricks So Bizarre: Susan Collins v. Public Record

Maine's Republican U.S. Senator Susan Collins is now often the critical swing vote in the Republican's bare majority in the U.S. Senate. Read how she won her first race for that office in 1996. When a public record's researcher requested a copy of a financial disclosure form from when she worked in Massachusetts, Collins went ballistic, accusing her Democratic opponent, former Maine governor Joe Brennan, of violating her privacy in an attempt to dig up dirt on her. (He hadn't, the DSCC had hired the researcher.) The Bangor Daily News, then Maine’s largest daily paper, compounded her ridiculous charges with a series of articles that landed that paper in court facing a libel suit (which the newspaper lost), brought by the researcher they had trashed – but that case was not closed before Collins won the 1996 election. Then Sen. Collins, hoping to repeat history, tried it again, starting with a breathless accusation that her 2008 challenger hired someone to videotape her at a public parade. (Gasp! Shocking!) But this time the Maine media came down hard on her. Read this insider’s look at the inexcusable way Collins manipulated the public’s right to know in 1996. And then, in an extended addendum in this 2007 second printing, read Collins' silly new charges, and the Maine and DC media's reaction to them. (Hint: Maine's Bangor Daily News does not come out well on this one either). Spoiler alert -- Collins won that 2008 race, and was reelected again in 2014.